Marketing tips, observations & philosophy, plus a few rants and random musings - from those who practice, preach and teach marketing, research, advertising, public relations and business strategy.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

New Brand Identity for the Sci-Fi Channel

On July 7th, NBC Universal will be rolling out a new brand identity for its cable television property, the Sci-Fi Channel. The new look is shown at left.

Home to such popular shows as Ghost Hunters, Primeval, Moonlight and Equilibrium, the channel has a relatively small but loyal audience. While I would love to hear from some of them to get their reactions... I'm going out on a limb and predicting that no one's going to be too fond of the new identity for the Sci-Fi brand.

First off, humans are usually fairly resistant to change. 99% of the time we'll take the old. (Thank you very much.)

Secondly, and more troubling to me, is the fact that the new logotype has no connotation of anything scientific, nothing that says science fiction. Four rather plain, very round-ish letters. In white. Blandsville.

And finally, while I'm ranting, I cannot quite come to terms with how the new brand name comes across phonetically. Does anyone hear: "Siffy" or perhaps "Sife-E?" Somewhere between the two "y's" and the lowercase "f" everything breaks down. The mini Web site that explains the new branding approach is even all jacked up.

On a positive note--and for the sake of balance--I will say that the new positioning statement is pretty good. It's an action-oriented invitation to me to imagine. I like that. With the word "Greater," they are hinting at some bigger, better things to come. That sounds good and promising, also.

Let's hope Sci-Fi, or Siffy, lives up to its promise ... and hope that the programming is better than the logo design work. Marketing geniuses and Sci-Fi brand evangelists, please tell us (post a comment) if your feelings are contrary.

8 Comments:

Anonymous said...

with the tag line especially, it looks and feels like those pseudo-english words you sometimes see in foreign advertising. maybe theyre trying to reach out to a larger audience.

also, i think the letter "y" visually, is kind of like some words, that after you say them too many times they start to lose their meaning. seeing the letter "y" twice that close together just creates confusion.

i wonder if theyre distancing themselves from science fiction content.

I think most, if not all (i.e. 99%), will agree that the new "Syfy" is a troubling change... laughable really. This whole rebranding reminds me of the Eureka show's logotype - which reminds me that I read a short story about increased female viewership for that show. Could this new brand identity be SciFi's attempt at reaching a more female audience?